As its name implies, an inductor-capacitor (LC) tank includes a capacitor connected to an inductor. An LC tank uses magnetic resonance to produce an oscillating electromagnetic frequency.
An integrated, high-Q (quality factor) LC tank is often required in communication systems (e.g., for up-conversion/down-conversion), sampled analog applications (e.g., for analog-to-digital converter, filter, etc.) and microprocessors. It is characterized by oscillation amplitude (or power), frequency, stability, phase noise and tuning range.
Conventional LC tanks have independently working inductors (L) and capacitors (C), which generally do not affect each other's operation. Typically, the tuning of a conventional LC tank is done by varying the capacitance (C) elements, while the inductance (L) element is fixed.
Therefore, enhanced efficiency LC tank designs enabling co-tuning of inductance and capacitance elements would be desirable.